


+1

by shelter



Series: Evenings without echoes [6]
Category: Claymore (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Accidental Death, Awakened Being-Human Relationships, Dark, Introspection, Multi, Post-Series, one-sided relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 11:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19829560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: Post-Series. Seeing the way Nike and her lover look at each other, Anastasia wonders where she went wrong in her life.





	+1

+1

(Rated T for Violence)

* * *

 _"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."_  
\- **William Shakespeare** , 'Measure for Measure'. 

.

.

After what I had said about Nike’s lover last night, she didn’t talk to me the whole morning. We eat our hosts’ breakfast in silence. Nike leaves me to pay them, not bothering with small talk.

We don’t talk as we gather our equipment and sheathe our Claymores. She doesn’t even check if we have enough supplies and yoki suppressant pills to last on Mount Zakol. On our way, I imagine that she’ll say something, since she knows the route better. But the mountain is obvious enough in the windless morning. Instead, birdsong and the crunch of our feet on rock carries us through the first few hours of the trek.

It’s my first trip to Mount Zakol. It’s Nike’s fourth. Mount Zakol is the hunting ground of the last awakened being on the island, Lisah the Bold. After surviving the Destroyer and Priscilla’s last stand, Audrey had given Lisah sanctuary in a small strip of forest near Mount Zakol. She was free to hunt and kill there, provided she didn’t have human blood on her hands.

Every year, Audrey assigns warriors to ensure Lisah kept her side of the deal. This year, Audrey’s sends us.

We hike through abandoned villages on the slopes of Mount Zakol. The birdsong has quieted, and no traveller has passed us for miles. The strenuous slopes give way to a winding trail that requires us to go on all fours to climb.

Nike breaks the silence. “Take this route.”

“Where?”

“That one.”

Halfway up the slope, a overgrown trail forks away into the forest. A pair of crossed branches block its path. Nike chucks them aside, but when we’ve crossed, she carefully reassembles them. Immediately we descend into a prehistoric forest, with clouds of wet moss wafting from the trees, looking like chandeliers of dew.

“Ten kilometres to the meeting point,” Nike says.

From what I understand, the meeting point is at a depression where two streams meet. It’s near where Lisah has chosen to make her home. Other warriors say that the terrain reduces chances of being caught in an ambush.

I fall back to let Nike lead. She blitzes through the degraded trail as if she were born in the forest.

“Listen, Nike,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” She barely slows her pace.

“For what I said about Ester last night.”

We’ve known each other for almost six years. We’d met at the academy, and before I became the Number Seventh of my generation, we had been deployed on the same team eight times. When I had the rare privilege of choosing who I wanted on my detail, Nike was the first and only warrior who I trusted to have my back. Completely.

Opposites attract, it seems. She excels where I waver. Nike knows when to be forceful when de-escalation fails. She has this ability to understand exactly when to use violence – something I’ve never mastered. Prior to the fall of the Organisation, we had been on a roll: seven successful awakened being hunts with zero fatalities. We were the warriors everyone wanted on their team.

But since then, she’d been doing her own thing, organising her own hunts. She had her own reputation too. It’s natural: time and priorities pulls comrades apart.

Nike inhales. From behind, it look like she’s sighing. She stops and turns towards me. She flexes her shoulders, which means she’s trying to stay calm.

“To be honest, I’m not sure what to do either.”

“So how did you leave it with her?”

“She’s back in my room at the inn with the machete.”

* * *

I’d arrived alone to the town of Mazgirt, on the road to Mount Zakol, just before sunset. Several sisters at Rabona had helped me to un-braid and prepare my hair – in case it would be needed during my visit with Lisah.

Before the fall of the Organisation, Mazgirt had been a poor, wretched place, at the edge of the large forest teeming with yoma and awakened beings. Every household had lost someone to the yoki-touched in those days. It wasn’t a market town, but it had it’s own wall, raised on mud seven metres wide. Even then, it had been rebuilt twice in a decade because of awakened rampages.

Passing through Mazgirt last night, I saw traders selling cattle, street performers and children playing in the dimming glare of sunset. Ten new inns had opened in the town, which was gaining a culinary reputation as a place to eat exotic game meat from the nearby woods. The newly-opened Rabonan mission had a poor house and church attached to it, with a permanent member of the clergy stationed there.

At the inn I had been booked at, my hosts were talkative, and insisted the nearby hot springs were a must-visit after any business had been concluded.

“One last thing,” my host lady said. “Would you please check in your weapon?”

“Check in?”

“We’re a peaceful town, my dear. Only sharp things here are butcher’s knives and forks.”

She struggled with my Claymore. Opening a cloak room, I saw her rest my sword against another of similar height.

“Has Nike – sorry, my fellow companion arrived?”

“Yes. She’s at the tavern across the street.”

At the tavern, the cooks were roasting something on the spit that was not neither lamb or deer. Nonetheless, it emitted a rich scent that jammed my senses. The place was packed. Serving girls dressed in the local costume drifted back and forth, serving platters of roast meat, mead and small talk.

No one paid me a second glance.

At a corner, a table away from where a cook was carving up an enormous vertical spit of meat, Nike had already made herself at home with food and several flagons of the local mead. When she spotted me, she gestured me over with a partially-eaten chunk on a fork.

“Well well well. Winged Anastasia is in town.”

“Hello, Nike. Long time no see.”

She was tanner, taller. She’d done her hair in an unruly undercut, with a messily-chopped fringe that fell over her right eye.

“I like the new look,” I told her.

“So says the goddess of hair.”

“I hear you’ve been breaking hearts all around the island.”

“Well, anything’s better than stuffy, boring old Rabona.”

“Rabona’s my home.”

“That’s why you're still a hopeless virgin.”

“Hey!”

We’d settled in to our old banter from our hunting days. Nike always making some off-handed comment on my restraint, and I always trying to marvel at how she became so brash. Just that this time, I didn’t feel self-conscious: we were equals now, no more hierarchy between us.

Nike bestowed upon me a dazzling, unguarded smile: meat in her teeth, and a beard of mead on her lip. For a brief moment, I flushed.

Then I realised she was tracking someone behind me. I turned to see a serving girl, red at Nike’s attention, bring her another round of drinks.

“What’s your name?” Nike asked.

“It’s Ester.”

“I think I’ve seen you before.”

“I don’t think so,” Ester replied.

* * *

We walk until the sounds of the forest get replaced by the thunder of rapids. Sure enough, Nike leads me through a clearing to fast-flowing stream. In the open space, there’s a blackened pit, and sword marks on the nearby trees – the remains of a campsite.

Instead of crossing the stream, she follows the banks, edging her away up as the gradient increases. We encounter the first of three waterfalls, fringed with ferns, decorated with butterflies whose wings catch the sun.

A rope runs diagonally across the centre of the flow. Nike takes it, and hoists herself up with the help of the rocks at the side.

When I ask why we pass through water when there’s a trail on land, she says the water masks out our scent.

“She can still sense our yoki,” I say.

“She’s not allowed to use her yoki.”

“What?”

“Part of the deal is that she’s on yoki suppressant pills until the day she dies,” Nike says. “Or we kill her.”

We trace the three waterfalls and arrive, sopping wet, at the top of a slope. At a tree marked with an X, Nike stops. She points below, through the trees, where a small cabin made of wood sits beside a crossing of streams. It looks deserted, with weeds climbing up one side.

“I’m going to take a look,” Nike declares.

“Wait what?”

“I’ve met her before. So she probably won’t attack me on sight.”

“Then what should I do?”

Nike looks up at the trees.

“Do your hair thing in case things get ugly.” 

* * *

Wealthy, safe towns have no need for curfews. So the patrons in the tavern dined and partied late into the night. Nike’s interest in Ester grew as the night wore on. The serving girls I talked with seemed more interested in chewing their fingernails than making light conversation.

At one point during the night, our table crowded with flagons, Nike and Ester moved into a darker corner for more privacy. Feeling like an obvious extra, I decided to head back to the inn.

Then, a man entered the tavern. He had a suit of chain mail and carried a nasty looking club. He looked around the room, and spotted Nike and Ester. By then, Ester had laid her skirt over Nike’s waist and was breathing into her neck.

The man took one look at them, turned to the nearest serving girl, who stopped biting her fingernails and said, “Does Colm know about this?”

“About what?”

Unsatisfied with the answer, he left the tavern.

I watched all this, nursing an empty flagon. A faint odour of roasted meat still stuck to my knuckles. I walked up to Nike and Ester, and cleared my throat loudly.

“Hey Anastasia. Sorry there’s no room here for you.”

I ignored Nike. “Time to go.”

“What now?”

“Your girlfriend’s friend, a guy called Colm, is coming.”

“We can handle one guy.”

“Not when he’s bringing ten friends with him.”

“Just a little longer.”

“Now, Nike!”

“Okay, okay. You're no fun –”

Ester and I helped Nike up. As Nike leaned onto me for support, Ester smoothed her skirt and adjusted Nike’s armour, as if they’d been partners longer than me and Nike.

* * *

I wait in the shadows. I’d trip-wired everything between the forest and the house with my hair. The sun, creeping up the horizon, began to burn into the foliage. I steady my breathing, let myself become part of the forest.

Nike paces around the house, and when’s she’s stalked enough, does it backward. I realise, watching her movements, that she’s never still. Even when she’s just standing in the shade, her foot’s tapping, or she’s flexing her shoulders. She does not glance in my direction. Instead, she’s focused on her hands, feet or sword.

The barest hint of something triggers my senses. Signalling Nike, I see her draw her Claymore and place it in front of her like a walking stick.

From the forest in front of Nike, a short girl walks into view. The scene would be ordinary if not for what she’s carrying: a fully-grown stag slung over her shoulder, as she drags a pile of meticulously arranged logs three times her size on a harness. She doesn’t see Nike at first. But when she does, she drops everything.

“You’re Nike, aren’t you?” she says.

“We meet again Lisah the Bold.”

“To what do I owe this intrusion?”

“To make sure you’re keeping your side of the deal.”

“Isn’t it obvious enough?”

“Step out, put your hands on the wall here and strip down.”

Lisah sighs, but obeys. I test the tension of a strand that connects the tree beside me to the house – in case I need to help Nike.

Only when Lisah and Nike are standing side-by-side do I see how small – tiny, even – Lisah is. She has all the features of a woman but barely clears Nike’s elbow. When she lifts her dress, her ribs show like half-buried twigs.

“Can I please be dressed before –”

“Stay quiet.”

“I’m not your enemy.”

Nike kicks her legs apart. I have no idea what she’s doing, or if all this show of force is even necessary. But as Nike deals with Lisah, something unexpected happens: another girl walks into the clearing.

“Lisah?” she says. “What’s going on?”

A crown of flowers adorns her head. If not for that, she would’ve looked like any other girl from any village on the island: basket full of mushrooms, barefoot, white linen dress.

“Lisah, who is that lady?”

I use the tension in the strand and launch myself into the air, landing in front of the new entrant.

“Don’t!” Lisah shouts.

“By all the gods, what’s going on?”

The girl drops her basket and runs towards Lisah and Nike. I stop her.

“Please!” Lisah says. “Please can you let me get dressed?”

“Not before you tell me who is this.”

The girl is sobbing, and she is straining against my arm. I feel as uncomfortable about all of this as her.

“She’s my beloved. My wife,” Lisah says.

“How do I know you’re not lying eh?” Nike counters. “How do I know you’re not keeping her to eat her?”

“I’m not the one with blood on my hands!”

Lisah looks to me. Nike tells her to shut it. Knowing the truth, I let Lisah’s wife go.

* * *

We followed Ester back to her house. She led us to the outskirts of town, to a crumbling shack, hemmed in on all sides by either trampled down cattle fences or overgrown fields. All the way, she insisted Colm was not someone to be feared. That he was just a possessive alcoholic.

Ester went in to pack her things. When she took too long, Nike joined her. I waited outside, across from the house in a strand of trees. A distant neighbour’s hounds were howling for death someone where in the distance. In the dark eye of single unbroken window, I watch Nike move, lit by the faintest yoki signature.

Under the yolk-yellow light of the moon, I watched a man jog towards the house from the direction of Mazgirt. Overweight, burdened with a patchwork of chain-mail, brandishing a club – he definitely fit Ester’s description of Colm. He paused to catch his breath, and hobbled past the fence to the house. He used his club to knock the door in three loud, impatient thumps.

No one moved in the dark eye of the window. I’d lost Nike’s yoki.

Colm retraced his steps until he was by the road, before turning to stare at the house. Looking like a man caught doing something guilty, he did a complete survey of his surroundings. At one point, his eyes looked straight at me, standing in the shadow of the trees. But since he was looking for Ester and not me, his eyes passed over, and fastened them back to the house.

He advanced on the door, club swinging. That was my cue to move.

Only the crunch of my metal boots on gravel gave me away. When he saw me, he only saw the hilt of my Claymore coming down between his eyes.

* * *

Later, after we’d dragged Colm’s body away from Ester’s sight, we found gold, keys to the gate of Mazgirt and the machete sheathed in his belt.

“This isn’t good,” Nike said.

“You’re telling me.”

“You shouldn’t have killed him.”

“He’s not dead,” I said. Then realising how hollow that sounded, I added, “It was either you or me.”

Nike took the gold, while I wrapped a piece of cloth to staunch the bleeding on Colm’s head. Inside, I heard what I took to be Ester crying.

“We should leave and get on with the mission,” I said.

“And leave Ester here?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t changed at all Anastasia.”

“We have a mission.”

“That’s the problem. You don’t see anything –”

“Ester has nothing to do with this,” I said. “Just give her the gold and let’s go.”

“She needs rescuing. We’re helping her escape this shit place.”

“Nike, you’re drunk.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Just because you met the love of your life tonight doesn’t mean you also need to be her saviour.”

* * *

I sit cross-legged on the floor in Lisah’s cabin. It’s small, stuffy and barely enough for four people, but furnished with furs and a richly decorated with herbs. Lisah’s wife serves me wildflower tea, but otherwise doesn’t speak a word to me. I understand. I would be angry if two armed women turned my entire world upside down too.

Across from us, Nike watches as Lisah downs a handful of yoki suppressant pills. Nike, her violent streak abated, looks on with the enthusiasm of a procedural arms check. She nods to me, probably indicating the mission is complete since Lisah’s keeping her side of the bargain.

When Lisah’s done, she sits with her beloved, stroking her arm to reassure her. They look at each other, making me feel as if I’ve done something seriously wrong with my life.

“These pills you force her to take make her ill,” Lisah’s wife says.

“That’s not my problem,” Nike responds.

“It’s not as if she’ll eat me.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

Lisah begins to cough. It goes from her clearing her throat to a hacking, watery choking. She gets up and stumbles out of the cabin. A full moment passes before I get up to follow.

“Make sure she doesn’t throw up the pills!” Nike tells me, stopping Lisah’s wife from following.

Lisah collapses before she makes it to the stream. When I turn her over, she coughs flecks of blood into my tunic.

I lead her to the water’s edge, and cradle her as I wash the sick from her face and sides of her mouth. She’s smaller than a child, possibly even more delicate. I wonder how is this fragile thing is the last Awakened Being, the last of our enemies.

“I would never kill her,” Lisah says.

I cup water into her mouth and she slowly sips it.

Far away, back in Mazgirt, Ester waits with a bag of gold and a machete in Nike’s room at the inn. Or maybe she’s already running, escaping from one act of supposed sisterly protection I committed for Nike’s safety. I think of Ester blushing at the tavern, as Nike compliments her eyes. I think of Lisah’s wife in the cabin, staring down Nike, hoping that I’m not making things worst for Lisah. And then I think of Lisah in my arms, her dress literally floating from her thin, stick-like frame, starving herself and getting smaller and smaller each year.

“How does it feel?” I ask.

“The pills burn.”

“No. How does it feel,” I ask again, “to be loved?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read this far, thank you for reading!
> 
> This story came from multiple ideas in my head: one half of a well-known pair going falling for someone else, the strain of deployment, policing the last Awakened Being & the drama of relationships. As always, I also wanted to write a Claymore story without swordfighting, focusing on the characters.
> 
> Questions for improvement:
> 
> 1\. What do you think of Anastasia's 1st POV? Is it a good vehicle to convey the ups & downs of her relationship with Nike?
> 
> 2\. What further improvements would you make to Anastasia or Nike's characters?


End file.
